I'm off to Vienna this morning, a two and a half hour train ride, to have lunch with a friend. It will be my first visit to Vienna. But I have a few minutes before I have to get to the train station so I wanted to leave a few impressions of last night's concert. Riccardo Muti, whose 80th birthday it is this year, has been conducting concerts at the Salzburg Festival for fifty years! Last night he led the Vienna Philharmonic and the State Opera Choir in a performance of the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven.
By this point in music history, the late 1820s, composers had pretty much stopped doing mass settings. Haydn's six for his patron and the few by Mozart are the last previous significant contributions. As Muti notes in the program, Beethoven struggled with the religious and aesthetic questions and devoted over three years to the composition, for which he made many, many sketches in one of which he even analyzed portions of Mozart's Requiem.
Years and years ago I owned a multi-LP recording of the work conducted, I think, by Otto Klemperer. I never really took to it as it seemed to me then a massive, shaggy, indigestible lump of a work. I much preferred the large religious works of Bach such as the B minor Mass, the Passions and the Magnificat. I was rather hoping that the performance last night would change my mind! Alas, it did not. My feeling still is that the music is overlong, lacking characteristic themes, with belaboured counterpoint and a lugubrious texture. And, I'm sorry, but I just don't think Beethoven writes well for voices. Both solo and choral they sound awkward and strained.
But let me hasten to say that I may be alone in my folly as the audience last night seemed to love the performance and called back the artists many times for bows. There was calling out and foot-stamping as well, so they really enjoyed it.
I guess it's just me.
The performance was in the Grosses Festspielhaus and it was sold out.
it's not just you. I was just trying to listen to Missa Solemnis and within minutes I just had this gut feeling I'd rather listen to Haydn. The choir director I knew in college hates music from "the Classic Era" as a general rule and he said the exceptions that prove the rule are Haydn and Mozart. The director's case was that The Creation and The Seasons are truly good choral music and even a the masses have some good stuff in them and that Mozart's choral music was pretty solid. The big common denominator, both composers actually sang in choirs whereas Beethoven's background was as an instrumentalist mainly and he never picked up a literally physical sense for what is comfortable to sing. Doesn't always mean it's "easy", of course.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YGuCjcgdh0
Famously, Sor wrote he had transcribed Haydn's fugue from the end of The Creation to play as a solo guitar work, so Mark Delpriora decided to transcribe the work in the style of Sor in lieu of Sor ever handing us down a manuscript to show his own work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WnNneAP__c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm8o4ySIjC0
I recall a choral work by Sor, I think his Ave Maria, that while not amazing, is decent. He too sang in a choir as a boy of course.
ReplyDeleteI agree about Missa Solemnis. I saw Fidelio once and was underwhelmed by that too. I recall the lady next to me similarly disliked it (though she also claimed to loathe nearly all music after Haydn -- Beethoven was rather out of comfort zone as it was). It had no really good melodies, no glorious vocal moments, generally unmemorable. The overture was the best part.
I confess that, glutton that I am, I am rather more curious to know about your lunch Bryan...
I didn't really expect to get agreement with my heterodox opinion on the Missa Solemnis!
ReplyDeleteAs for lunch, I had wienerschnitzle and weissbier at Cafe Hummel!
Tomorrow Richard Strauss' Elektra!
Wow, Mark Delpriora did quite a job getting that to fit on guitar!
ReplyDeleteAh not named after the composer it seems, but looks very nice nonetheless!
ReplyDelete